Until the Equinox Maybe

Why I have to quit the internet

Well, this is where I leave you for now.

On my coffee table

The season calls, and it says, Clear it out. Quiet it down. Slow everything. My body and heart call and say, It may be that for you there is no healthy participation in the attention economy. My nervous system and perhaps something more ineffable calls and declares, You have lost ahold of things that matter greatly to you and you know it.

In the last grey week of the year, you could have mostly found me sitting at my coffee table, pouring over my notebooks and planner for the coming here. I’m a pen and paper sort of gal. So there were no less than four notebooks, some loose paper, and a jam jar full of multicolored felt tip markers in front of me. There was a candle lit. There was tea. Delightful, yes?

In parts. But there was also my screen. Try as I might to keep my phone and iPad tucked away in that strange liminal time between Christmas and New Years, at least one of them remained out. There were test results to check. Returns to do. Things to order. And then: oh, but I’ll just check Notes quick. Oh, I’m bored of what I’m doing so I’ll read this post. Oh, now I have an idea to write down…

What I found amongst those days spent planning out my 2024 is that, for me, this is a year of different values

Firstly, work of a different value.

Here is a truth that’s hard for me to admit: I spent 2023 largely doing work for which I was not paid. At the beginning of the year, the job I’d spent the previous year doing suddenly ended. I quickly found other things to fill my time, like this Substack. But there was no clear path to a new “normal job.” I did some work that got me paid in produce and flowers. I knuckled down and did lots of work within my life, house, and garden. I filled our freezer and I did some odd jobs here and there. There was lots to do. Still, none of the work I did involved much of a paycheck.

Previously, I’d been paid to do work like what I now do in my own home. Housework, cooking, caring for people. I wasn’t paid equitably or consistently, but I was paid. Because I did it for someone else it had value. Now, because it’s for my own house, I’m told it no longer has a (monetary) value.

This has really been a blow, but largely just for my ego. It’s hard to let go of the value system the whole world runs on even if it benefits you to let it go. It’s hard when you realize that to have the life you want you must do even more of this work of opting out.

Somewhere between reading Caliban and the Witch and listening to interviews with Angela Garbes¹ last year, I started to see the work I do differently. I spend a lot of my time doing what Garbes calls “care work” and she views it as essential. It’s the work that keeps life going: managing the home, the food, the daily maintenance of bodies and lives. Before wage work came to rule I suspect it was just called “work.” However you phrase it, this is work that is largely done, historically and now, by women. And it is work that goes largely unpaid or under-paid in a capitalist system. This is by design. The de-valuing of daily, endless, necessary work was integral to the formation of capitalism.²

And so, I wonder, is that de-valuing integral to capitalism’s continuation?

After a year of grappling with this, I am now sure that the work I’m doing within my home is valuable. Highly valuable, in fact. It’s just that I’m doing work of a different value than the one our economic system currently fetishizes.³ My household and everyone in it has thrived with me doing work of a different value. We have spent less money, eaten more nutritious food, felt more secure in our house, used less water, and moved more smoothly through our days. It’s an honor and privilege. Still, every time someone asks me “and what do you do?” I have to assess if they’ll judge me and if I want to deal with that today.

I am not the problem. My household’s needs are not the problem. The work I do is not the problem and does not need to be automated. The economic system—the one in which people are losing their minds over travel mugs, hate groups can monetize their content, and conning people is cool—that is the problem.

So I will keep up with this work of a different value this year. Caring for my home, my people, our garden, our food, our goals, and also my own healing. I will be working to live nearer the cycles, pushing my household towards greater sustainability and reciprocity, and preparing for the societal collapse I believe is already happening.

And so this is very much on my mind: How do we change the default value system except by participating in it differently? Or, perhaps, opting out completely?

Rosie Spinks at

What Do We Do Now That We're Here?

summed it up quite well recently:

“Burnout, loneliness, inequality, divisiveness, struggling to make ends meet in a hyper-individualist culture, anxiety and depression on a scale we haven’t seen before. These things feel like they’ve become the hallmarks of modern life, not the exceptions on the margins. The mistake lies in seeing all those problems — the climate crisis and the crises in our own personal lives — as separate. The value system that is failing the planet is the same one failing us.”⁴

Here my brain instantly offers: I feel an idea for an essay coming on! Let’s make some CONTENT!

But the truth is these are ideas which I’m actually not interested exploring through writing, at least not straight away. I’m interested in living them. The past year I have been living them partly. But because of the fear of not conforming to the dominant value system I haven’t committed as fully as I know I can.

Rosie goes on to say:

“Rather than seeing a slower, less convenient, more sustainable life as the price we must pay to preserve our planet’s future, we should see it as a welcome invitation. Because as it turns out, what’s good for the planet is good for us, too. I believe that animating that idea in our own lives is a meaningful form of resistance.”

So I would like to animate those (and other) ideas this year. And to animate—that is, “to bring to life”—I must sink deeper into my own sphere of influence, wherein I am trying to resist the dominant value system.

Which, turns out, means leaving Substack and the internet world. At least for a time. I’ve already gotten rid of all other social media and it’s not enough. Distraction still hounds me.

I don’t know if I’ll be back. But I promise that if I do come back it’ll only be because I have something that feels truly worthwhile to say. Because that is the other quandary I’m having. The writing part. That’s what I do here. I’m not promoting anything else, just the words I can string together.

Writing and reading are the most constant through lines of my life. I’d be nothing without them. But I’ve become fatigued by them both. There is just so much content being thrown at me. And after a while, I’ve found that maybe I’m not writing any more. I’m doing content creation.

Being a person who writes on the internet feels like working within an M.C. Escher-looking world. There’s the constant breakneck pace of material—written, audio, visual—coming at you and the feeling you need to put content back out often so that you stand out in the deluge. Tying yourself in knots to get your things seen. The craving for viral-ness. The craving for The Dream: which I see as supporting yourself wholly through the world that is important to you. You can never seem to tell where the path goes. Do these stairs go up or down? Or, at least, that’s what it’s been like for me.

In writing this, I realized that my experience of the internet has been a highly unusual one, and I think this influences why I can’t handle it here. I was on the internet too often, too young.

I “went to” a public, online cyber charter school from fifth grade on. In a sense I was homeschooled but mostly via the computer. Which means I was on a screen for the duration of the school day everyday for eight years. Screens were also a source of entertainment and connection. So whereas my peers were getting home at 3:30pm and just then jumping onto their computers or TV, I had already been on a computer for upwards of six hours. I definitely looked at things other than my schoolwork throughout the day and then I stayed on the computer or TV after I was done my work. Somehow, I consumed largely wholesome content⁵, but it was still too many hours of content consumption. As a teenager, I was on screens as much as an adult who works from home today. And I think very few people are saying that an adult who looks at their screens for 8+ hours daily is totally fine and they should keep that up, no problem.

The research that’s now coming out about screens and kids, screens and the human brain, feels personal to me. I feel like a test case. Did my early interaction with the internet calibrate me in a particular way? Can ever live peacefully with the present iteration of the internet in my life?

There is also the matter creativity. Since I was a teenager, I’ve spent so many years producing written work for money or acclaim. Short stories for prizes, essays for my degree, social media content for work, articles for Medium, and now whatever we call what we make here on Substack. I’ve read my fair share of articles with titles like “How I made six figures in my first year on ____ platform.” I’ve had a deep ache somewhere in my core every time I finished one. I’ve wanted it, those six figures they said were so easy to get. I’d have taken less as long as it came with a side of success.

For much of my adult life I’ve written because I knew it could get me something. And it has gotten me things. But that’s also changed my relationship with writing.

I signed up for Substack one year to the day that I’m drafting this letter. And on that day I thought: Maybe this is how I do it. This is how I live The Dream. They say if I just get ___ subscribers I can make ___ dollars. I can write about what I’m interested in, I just have to meet the requirements of the platform. This is a way I can make money from home, doing what I care about.

But my creativity, which I’d already lost touch with, did not make the leap. I think it wanted no part in this value system.

Add to that what became clear about this platform at the end of 2023. I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with Yahtzee. Wherever you fall on that matter, I think it clarified that Substack is not a utopia. It isn’t for us. It’s for its investors. It’s for its own ends. It will only work well temporarily. It will only work for a few.⁶

On writing though. I want to learn again why I write. I don’t know any more. I haven’t known for a long time. This really saddens me. What is the thing that at thirteen got me up in the middle of the night to write down an idea for a novel? What made those ideas glitter in my brain? What made me feel in contact with something larger than myself when I wove stories? I don’t think I can find answers to these questions on the internet.

I still have many ideas but I realize now the appeal is content creation, money, and acclaim. These are not necessarily bad things, but if that’s what I’m doing I’m not even doing that very well. I haven’t the constitution for it. Yet I keep trying.

Here is what these years online have felt like: screaming at the top of my lungs so that I might be heard over the din, even as my throat has long gone raw, and at the same time seven different pieces of music have been pummeling my eardrums all at once. My voice warbles, my hearing is shot, and if I wanted to imagine a new song there would be no space for it. I don’t know what my real voice sounds like anymore, if I ever did.

I want to hear my own voice.

I want back the days when a notebook was a place of solace and magic. I want to carry a notebook with me everywhere again, like a talisman. I want to un-remember how fast I can pin down and vivisection sentences when I bang them through a keyboard. I want to fall in love again with the slow swoop of my own handwriting and accept that it is perfectly fast enough to transmute my thoughts.

I want to write or read something and feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off. I want to have the energy to meet robust ideas. Complex, weighty, whole grain ideas that deserve—and in fact can only be handled by—a long, thorough digestion. I’ll take whatever the creativity version of a probiotic and digestive enzyme are, please. Put me on a full course of them. Give me a good, strong dose. My micro-biome is awry for sure, after years of content creation, content consumption, and being abused by the attention economy.

I want to spend five years going knee deep into an idea, if that’s what it takes. I want to love words again. I want to read without thinking about how I can use that bit in an essay next week. I want my words to swirl in a room where two or more are gathered. I want my words to land where they are needed. I want to listen. I want to be able to quiet my being enough so I can listen well. I want to stay silent if that is what the soaring hawk tells me to do. I wonder if I can become quiet enough that I’ll be able to clearly hear what I really think, value and believe. I want to know if it’s a yes. Yes, write an essay, a novel, a work of non-fiction, a poem. Here’s an idea ripe for you to pursue. Or a no. No, that idea is not yours to chase right now. Let it go. Whichever it is I want to accept it. Maybe for the rest of my days I will only patiently record my life and keep that story locked away in a cedar chest. Maybe I will someday have an author event at the local independent bookstore. Maybe being on the bestseller list was never what I wanted after all.

I used to write poems. I used to journal, religiously. I used to lose myself in a piece of fiction. I used to be the weird girl with the notebook. And I feel less myself because I let all of that go.

So: I must quit the internet. At least for a little while.

Here is what I’m doing. I’ve unsubscribed to nearly all Substacks except a tiny handful. I no longer want to give Substack my money. Some of the work I’ve found here teaches and feeds me though, and I do want to continue to receive that. I’m replacing online activity with in-person. I have and am signing up for multiple in person groups and events. If you and I have connected through this weird little world and you would like to stay in contact beyond it, please send me a message. My email is in the About page. If you want, we can send each other real letters. I’m told I have really lovely handwriting and I would love to hear from you!

I will not be publishing or writing for Substack for the remainder of winter. As we near the spring equinox, I’ll consider if I want to continue to participate in online life and if I have anything to say here. If I do, and you choose to hang around in the meantime, you’ll hear from me when the violets are starting to come back. No matter what I decide, look for the violets.

Until then, may you be curious and kind. May you find peace. May you go outside often. I wish the same for myself.

Ema ꩜

1. I never did get around to reading her book, Essential Labor, but I listened to many podcasts with her.

2. See, Caliban and the Witch.

3. I can’t lay claim to this perspective switch. My husband phrased it this way and it helped me hugely. It’s why I’m writing about it at all.

4. See the full essay:

Before good writing comes good thinking

5. I read blogs like Design*Sponge, Snippet & Ink, Wikstenmade, posy gets cozy, A Beautiful Mess, and unruly things. I had a Flickr. I got a Pinterest when it was in beta. I had a tumblr but somehow only saw wholesome things—I still cannot explain this.

6. While I’m at it: I hate Notes. Deeply. Truly. Irrevocably.